More than five and a half million Americans out of work in January found jobs by November. In the same period, the jobless rate fell from 6.3 to 4.2 percent , a drop of one-third. Jobless claims in November hit a 52- year low . Real GDP growth for 2021 is expected to be 5.9 percent. (Between 2000 and 2019, real GDP growth stayed lower than 3 percent.) President Biden’s temporary child tax credit, which provides direct cash payments to poor families, cut child hunger rates from 30 percent to 21 p...
Dec 16, 2021•39 min
Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money takes stock of the biggest trends of 2021 for business, the economy, and investing, and the biggest questions ahead for 2022. He awards CEO of the year (there were three), business story of the year, and a nice piece of good news for investors ahead.
Dec 15, 2021•25 min
Av Harris of the national fiscal responsibility advocacy group The Concord Coalition joins the show to share insights from his experience working for some of the most colorful -- and colorfully named -- politicians in America, and to explain the new Concord Coalition report on why immigrants will be so vital to maintaining economic growth in the future. Also, what's up with the Congressional Budget Office saying that the Build Back Better bill won't add to the deficit, and then saying well, if y...
Dec 14, 2021•23 min
On today's show, we highlight the complicated legacy of Bob Dole. For Americans of a certain age, basically age 35 and over, Bob Dole was an avatar of the Republican Party. After his losing presidential campaign, he went through a transition from a taciturn, gruff politician known as Dr. Gridlock to a much more genial and vulnerable public image cultivated on late night TV, as a spokesperson for World War II veterans, and on behalf of sufferers of erectile dysfunction as a pitchman for Viagra. I...
Dec 09, 2021•44 min
Or Rush Limbaugh? Or the same media echo chamber that exists on the right. Longtime West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe and Matt Robison dive into where the right wing dominance of slanted media comes from (and make no mistake, the right wing does dominate), and whether it is ultimately fixable.
Dec 07, 2021•25 min
Today, we're thrilled to welcome back two friends of the show, Mario Broussard and Alex Ivey, who are Senior Vice President and Vice President of Research respectively at Global Strategy Group, one of the premier polling, research, and public affairs companies in America. They have been running an absolutely fascinating research project, Global Strategy Group’s bi-annual series, The Melting Pot: GSG’s Ongoing Look at Racial Politics in America, which is intended to take the temperature of Black ...
Dec 06, 2021•43 min
In the last few months American politics has become a little mysterious, if not downright confounding. By almost every measure, President Joe Biden and the Democratic party have had an extremely successful year. Remember we started this year with an insurrection in the very heart of our government, with armed vigilantes roaming the halls of Congress. We also had a brand new set of vaccines but almost no Americans vaccinated against a deadly pandemic. Unemployment was still six and a half percent...
Dec 02, 2021•43 min
Markets have been spooked by Omicron news in recent days. And Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales are down year-on-year. So which of these is a bigger concern, or are either of them really a bad sign at all? Also, Dorsey is OUT at Twitter, Amazon is taking over the shipping market, and what can we learn for business from the Patriots? Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money weighs in. Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash...
Dec 01, 2021•20 min
In 2016 the Democratic Party lost control of every branch of government. Countless explanations and excuses have been offered, and despite an anti-Trump backlash in 2018 and eking out the Presidency in 2020, Democrats have been on a continued downward slide down ballot. And now, facing the midterms, their prospects don’t exactly look rosy. The news media is full of doom and gloom, the President’s popularity is underwater despite some massive successes, and Republican voter suppression efforts lo...
Nov 30, 2021•44 min
By most measures, the economy is doing great. The country's economic output is way past where it was before the pandemic. In October alone, the country created 531,000 jobs and set a record for the number of people leaving their jobs, which is a sign the people see a hot job market and want to take advantage of it. Unemployment is way down, wages are way up, and the average American has 50% more their checking account today than they did just two years ago. Not to mention that businesses are als...
Nov 22, 2021•38 min
Matt joins legendary West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe on his show to talk about his Alternet article describing the government's massive bias toward the old over the young, and why it needs to end. Then, a discussion about Republican infighting and growing threats of violence, what it means, and why it's happening.
Nov 18, 2021•44 min
Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money explains what to make of the very different things people are saying about the state of the economy / their personal finances, and how they are actually acting. Right now, Americans tell pollsters that the economy is bad and that they are worried. But they are spending, seeking new job opportunities, and investing like things are great. So what does that mean, and what do businesses, investors, and analysts do when those things diverge?
Nov 17, 2021•20 min
Josh Schwerin is a communications veteran among Democrats, and it sure seems like they need one right now. A former press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he served as the National Spokesman for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and as the Senior Strategist and Director of Communications for Priorities USA, the biggest Democratic outside advocacy group and political action committee, where he played a big role in figuring out how to spend $153 million in advertising in the 2...
Nov 15, 2021•42 min
The degree to which President Biden can sell his agenda to the American public maybe the single most important factor in driving the politics of the coming years. Many analysts have compared President Joe Biden's legislative plans for America to the Great Society program of President Lyndon Johnson -- widely regarded as the most ambitious set of social investments in American history. With the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and Joe Biden's signature social investment program, the ...
Nov 11, 2021•43 min
Matt appears on The Watchdog with Howard Monroe to run through what actually happened in the elections last week and whether it was really all that surprising. Also, what will it take to win in 2022, how much will passing BBB matter, and Weird Al Yankovic!
Nov 09, 2021•25 min
Adnaan Muslim is one of the most sought-after campaign consultants in America. A top counselor to Senators like Elizabeth Warren and Raphael Warnock and Boston mayor-elect Michelle Wu, Adnaan joins the show to explain what happened last Tuesday, how Dems can fight the CRT and education messaging from Republicans, what the path to a fighting chance in 2022 looks like, and what his favorite Elizabeth Warren stories are.
Nov 08, 2021•44 min
Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money, the #1 stock investing radio show in America, returns from a summer break spent dominating the airwaves on his own show to talk about the biggest moves and most puzzling questions in the business world. What's driving the Meta shift? Why on Earth is Microsoft back on top? And has anyone figured out the new Hollywood model? Plus, wing-chef robots????
Nov 05, 2021•25 min
Today, we’re going to take you on a journey down into some of the most insidious, infuriating, and un-American skulduggery that has gone on in this country. And then, we’re going to talk about how we’ve started to turn the tide, and how maybe, maybe we can finish the job. Our guide on this trip is David Daley. His journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and the autho...
Nov 04, 2021•43 min
I do a regular show with financial advisor Mike Morton about personal financial planning. Today, he and I got into a bit more of a politics, policy, and tax discussion around the idea that we could tax the ultra-rich to pay for social investments. It's a conversation about practical politics, how hard t is to come up with a rational tax policy, and how the ultra rich avoid our best efforts to get them to pay their fair share.
Nov 02, 2021•25 min
Far more than the high-profile antics of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan—and yes, even bigger than Donald Trump’s "Big Lie”—our guest today says that it is anonymous, often corrupt politicians in statehouses across the country who pose the greatest dangers to American democracy. Our old friend David Pepper is the former Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. Born and raised in Cincinnati, he’s served in city and county offices, run statewide in Ohio, and has a law degree fr...
Nov 01, 2021•44 min
The way we run political campaigns has changed drastically in the last two decades. Today, political campaigns spend three times more money and leverage far more sophisticated data and media tools, paired with an unnerving amount of information on voters. But those extraordinary powers have mostly been used not to have a more nuanced, persuasive public conversation, but to stoke outrage and election turnout. It is possible to argue that way we run campaigns has been a huge factor in how angry, d...
Oct 28, 2021•42 min
Matt talks about his recent Newsweek op-ed with West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe of The Watchdog. Will Trump run in 2024 (yes!), if he does are there any good outcomes (no!), and if the threat to America is so big, is there anything that can be done about it right now (yes!)
Oct 26, 2021•20 min
Congressman John Yarmuth has served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee since 2019, and was one of the key architects of the $1.9 American Rescue Plan that is lifting 5 million American children out of poverty, saving millions from losing their homes, and saving lives every day by getting people vaccines. He's also the hidden force behind trying to wrangle Democrats together on Build Back Better. In this fascinating interview before his retirement from Congress next year, Chairman Yarmuth ...
Oct 25, 2021•40 min
Do Democrats actually have a chance to hold on to their majorities in the US House and Senate in the midterm elections in 2022? History is not on their side. Since 1946, the average number of seats in the US House of Representative lost by the president's party in the midterm elections is 46. Projections by our recent guest David Shor show that in 2022, if Senate Democrats somehow manage to beat Republicans by a stunning four percentage points they’d only have about a 50-50 chance of holding ont...
Oct 21, 2021•41 min
In recent weeks, there's been one person driving the discussion in Democratic circles: David Shor. Big profiles in the New York Times and Politico have further elevated this rising political star, along with his stark warning that if Democrats think they're sitting pretty for the coming years having beaten back the forces of Trump in 2020, they're deluding themselves. Three months ago, we interviewed David on this show, and today, we bring you a re-release of that terrific episode, in which Davi...
Oct 18, 2021•42 min
One year ago today, political scientist EJ Fagan published an article called "End the Algorithm" on Tech Policy Press in which he identified the basic problem with Facebook: that it is powered by machine learning algorithms which favor outrageous, inflammatory, and degrading content. Now, new revelations from Facebook product manager-turned-whistle-blower Frances Haugen have rocked the company, drawn the attention of the world, and completely confirmed everything that Professor Fagan wrote. The ...
Oct 14, 2021•43 min
Is something fundamentally wrong with American journalism? On the right, we know that there’s all of the “fake news” propaganda: Fox, the New York Post, and right-wing radio. But on the left, a growing number of experts believe that something has also gone badly off track. Our guest today says that what’s happened is that mainstream news is not liberal anymore; it’s woke: propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago. So is this actually real? And how big a problem is it...
Oct 11, 2021•43 min
Author Magdi Semrau recently wrote an article for The Editorial Board arguing that the media is badly misleading the public on Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" plan, and explaining some of the massive political consequences that we could see. And the Democrats have not only let it happen, they've actively seeded their own problems. Magdi joins the show to walk us through a major media distortion happening right before our eyes, and what Democrats can do to salvage the situation....
Oct 07, 2021•43 min
Every four years, political analysts obsess about the Virginia governor's race, the first and usually closest big election after we elect a President. This year, the race is balanced on a knife's edge. Operatives around the country will be poring over data in the coming weeks to understand what is happening, what's working, what's not working, and where the 2022 midterms could be headed. One of the very top experts on the state is Mark Bergman, a political consultant who has worked around the co...
Oct 04, 2021•43 min
All paths have led to this day. The Biden agenda. Infrastructure. Child Care. Health Care. Funding for our entire government. Our entire country's credit. The biggest issues have all converged in Congress today, and everything is hanging by a thread. Our Senate insider, former Chuck Schumer right-hand man on policy and legislation Ryan McConaghy, walks us through the standoff...what are people thinking, what are people doing, and where all of this could be going.
Sep 30, 2021•44 min
